


You Left It Burning For Me

by BlueMoonHound



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Flirting, Awkwardness, Coming Untouched, Cunnilingus, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, F/M, Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Gem Sex, Hyperempathy, Hypothermia, Incest, Malnutrition, Multi, NSFW in later chapters, Parent/Child Incest, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Porn With Plot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Social Isolation, Time Shenanigans, graphic reliving of abuse, hot tubs, semilucid transtemporal mother-son dreamsex, the glass of time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:35:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28421064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMoonHound/pseuds/BlueMoonHound
Summary: Steven crash lands on a barren, snowy world, while traveling to a sector with no warp pads. He is surprised to find himself rescued by another gem.
Relationships: Crystal Gems & Steven Universe, Pink Diamond | Rose Quartz/Steven Universe, Rose Quartz | Pink Diamond & Steven Universe, crystal gems & pink diamond
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	1. Cold Princess

**Author's Note:**

> I may add more tags. I keep staring at them and rubbing my chin. So ill update them when i feel it's needed. as of now, assume they summarize the whole fic, and not just what is posted.

It's cold.

Steven blinks awake to the sight of pink, immediately aware of his bubble. Aware, as well, of the pile of snow sitting on top of his bubble, sliding gently off as he moves.

Huh.

It seems that he has crashed.

He stifles the urge to laugh hysterically.

This should be normal for him now. Bad things always happen to him.

He gathers himself. He doesn't feel injured. He seems to have crash landed on some snowy planetoid, but he doesn't recognize anything else about the place. Not that he could-- there's nothing to see. Is it safe to breathe here? He doesn't have his ship anymore, what’s left of it broken into pink rubble.

Steven rolls around the rubble, trying to figure out what he can salvage from it. The communicator is broken, and he doesn't see the flare. He's starting to shiver even in the stasis of his bubble, and decides to leave the site. After all, he can neither contact anyone nor expect them to be able to find him. It doesn't seem like there's much he can do with the shipwreck.

He needs to find shelter.

Finding shelter is going to be hard, though, because he is in the middle of a snowstorm on an alien planet. The snow is melting on the outside of his bubble, turning into presumably water. It fogs his view in every direction, but he knows dropping it would do little good. The storm is blizzard levels of storm. The wind batters against his bubble from every direction.

Maybe he could get above it...?

He frowns, looks at the sky, and then readies himself for a jump. The wind throws him off, but he manages to get up far enough to see at least something. A series of dark dots to the left. He tries not to let himself lose sight of them as he falls, despite the thick snow and clouds obscuring his vision even close to the ground. He can't-- it's his only chance to find anything at this point. He is so cold.

Chill has sunk under his skin and into his bones. The best he can do is to huddle his varsity jacket tighter around himself, put one foot in front of the other, and push on the walls of his bubble. He feels like he's carving his way through a wall. The deep frozen nothingness around him continues to sink in every direction, continues to bluster like some kind of white desert, unceasing. He hasn't seen a single tree, bush, or animal. He hasn't seen any sign of life whatsoever, despite everything. Despite the temperature being warm enough for him to survive in for even a few minutes. Despite the clear, massive amounts of water. He'd think this planet would have something on it, right? He sighs.

This is hopeless. Clearly, he's trapped on a barren snow planet. It's day, or he's sure he'd have frozen to death already. As it is, he's trembling under his sparse layers. He's not going to find anything out here. He wishes with a strength that makes him feel almost sick that he had brought someone with him on this trip. It was a side venture, but it was important enough that they could have taken the main ship. He could have brought someone with him. He'd asked them to let him go alone. He's stupid, stupid, idiot, imbecile. He pushes at the bubble again and again with trembling hands. He's stuck on a barren lifeless piece of watery rock with no chance of survival.

He wonders if pink Steven can resurrect him if he dies of exposure. Taking his gem out would be painful and risky, though, and it wouldn't even necessarily have the desired effect. (It would be suicide. He'd black out and leave his human form in the snow.)

He's just got to keep pushing.

This is crazy. He knows accidents happen, but he's spent years and years of his life facing enemies with a fightable cause. He can't fight unexpected asteroids. Well, he could have shot them, but they're not going to chase him with a weapon of mass destruction or anything. They don't pose much threat at all, on a normal day. But there's no such thing as a normal day in the life of Steven Universe, boy philanthropist. His life is a struggle. It had been years since he's gotten involved -- six years of peace and calm, before he felt like he needed to return to the world of gems. He needed to know everything was alright. And, despite himself, despite all the ways that he falls apart... He still felt like he needed to help people. He had decided to go to one of the outer colonies with garnet and a crew of new gem immigrants who he had befriended, to help them with politics. A planet not accessible by warp, light years from the nearest planet accessible by warp. It's crazy. He's stuck in this dumb situation, and he's not going to get out of it.

He hits something that he's sure isn't snow and stops. A rock? A wall? Fuck, did he get himself lost? Of course he did. How was he going to find a cave system from a single glimpse and a prayer? He supposes he can try following the edges of whatever he ran into, but he's not even sure what it is. The wind is howling out here. He can't be sure he's even going in a straight line, and any path behind him is immediately coated in snow.

But then whatever he hits _moves_.

He looks up, past the wall of snow, and is shocked by something bright pink, shimmering and almost pearlescent. He gasps, takes a step back, and his bubble pops.

Shit.

No, he needs his bubble, he doesn't know if this place is safe, he stumbles back away from the thing, tumbling in the snow, and it sits back and turns around.

He recognizes that silhouette.

_She_ turns around, standing up straight, taller than he would have expected, looking him up and down with diamond pupils, and then taking a step back.

"Steven?"

Steven blinks through the snow.

"W-w-w-w-w-hat?" he shudders.

_"What?"_ Pink Diamond repeats. She looks as confused as he looks. She looks worried. She takes another step back. "What are you doing here? How- how did you get here?" She laughs. and it's such a familiar laugh. He can visualize the tapes he watched over and over as a kid, playing clear as if he was watching them. but this version of this laugh isn't the happy kind, fuzzy over the camera mic. She sounds hysterical.

"What?" Steven said again.

"Oh -- Oh, we need to get you out of here! Oh, I should get you --" Pink diamond kneels down in front of him, and for a moment it looks like she is going to stop there. He can’t process what is going on. Is he hallucinating?

She reaches for him, her hands _warm_ and _solid_ and _real_. He's pressed against her shoulder, cradled against her waist like a baby. Her gemstone is hot through the fabric of his jeans. He thinks that maybe he's cold, because even his own gemstone isn't that hot, but maybe he's hallucinating.

Two fingers rubbing up and down against his spine.

The sound of the wind.

Over time, He became aware of little aches, a subtle thrum of tension through his whole body. It's warmer, wherever Pink had taken him, but he's still struggling not to pass out. He hadn't realized just how much his bubble was protecting him out there until he didn't have it anymore. He isn't even shivering. He knows what that means, and he wishes he didn't, for the sake of his steadily failing sanity.

He is placed on his feet. He stumbles back into the wall as soon as pink's hands leave his body, the cold like a knife but calming simultaneously. He's in a big blue and gray room, possibly made of ice, and the blurry form of Pink Diamond still looms in his presence, though her back is now turned.

"Pink?" He says, feeling delirious, wondering if he's dreaming, or if he's going to get any response from this apparition of his mother. She does turn towards him, though, and he flinches, expecting something awful to happen despite knowing she can't possibly be real.

"I wasn't sure you were awake," Pink says. He's staring at the diamond in her belly, instead of her face. It doesn't _look_ like his gem. It doesn't look like it would even be his gem if it changed angles. His thoughts are like slush. She has his mother's voice and he feels for a second that he's falling asleep in his bedroom to the sound of her tape, before jolting himself back to lucidity. She's so close to him. She's so big. She's sat cross legged on the floor of the icy cold cave, bent to almost his height as he shivers against the wall. She looks so real. So founded in the light of the room, so detailed and animated. Colors more vibrant than they were in Pearl's head, and at the same time more textured, more complex, more subdued. Like actual colors, rather than the memory of them. She's tangible.

"How?" He says, more of a squeak-twinged breath than an actual word, but she seems to understand what he said.

"It's a long story, maybe I'll tell you later. I got your message, though! You're my.. Son?" She put her face on her hand, cheek squishing up like real skin might. He imagines her warmth from earlier. Is he dying?

"What?" he says.

"Your message! _Can you imagine it, ever compassionate Steven Universe..._ " she sings. "You know, your and the other diamond's video to the cosmos?"

"Why are you here? Why am I hallucinating _you_?"

"Hallucinating!" Pink laughed. So familiar and dissonant. "Why would you be hallucinating?"

"I think I'm dying," Steven says. He should probably be trying to make her go away. He's not sure how to do that. He knows for sure that talking to her is not going to be the way to do that.

Her face falls. "I thought if- I got you out of the storm, you'd be okay, but..." She sighs. "What do you need? It's been so long since I lived with humans."

"So... long?" he says. And then, "Cold."

Pink stands. The movement of the air as she does makes him feel vaguely sick. She pushes the broken metal over the door aside with a rough shove, and drops it back down behind her with a clang.

Steven is alone.

Everything is ice. No longer haunted by the ghost of his mother, Steven misses her, because dying alone is even less appealing than dying with Pink Diamond at his side. He hates her, and everything she stands for, both in real living form and out, but he doesn't want to be alone. At least she tried to be good. At least she tried to do good things, there at the end of her life.

At least he was trying too, here.

Right?

He can't help but feel that this sucks, and there is no way he could make it feel any better. He is sick and tired of this feeling. He knows the sensation of dying too well, the feeling that there is nothing he can do to change his situation, and no one to help him. He feels like he is back in his bubble, spinning through space. There is no pain, but no air, no comfort... His existence is doomed to loneliness.

He closes his eyes. There is numbness in his every joint. He's going to die alone in space. Predictable. How could he have expected anything less?

Somewhere in his mind he hears the scraping of metal. A sharp, heavy thud.

"Steven. I'm back," he hears. So warm a voice. She's so warm, so warm, and he feels so cold when he feels her pick him up again. There is no place he would rather be. He feels like a child, tucked into his mother's hip. He is a child compared to her, half her size and much less than half her age. Or maybe she's a child compared to him, made to be so small for her kind. Needy and annoying.

He is warming up in her arms. He can feel the heat of a fire as it lights. Humidity rises slowly into the room as the ice clinging to the near walls melts into nothing around him. She's petting his hair and humming that dumb song the diamonds sang in the missive.

He lets himself fall asleep, finally.

He's alone in the warp void.

Dozens of streams shoot out around him, and he shivers. He can see someone-- he thinks -- Garnet, hovering.

Garnet!

He has to reach her. He reaches out, for her shoulder, and she turns around. Her face rotates smoothly, not like a person. Her arms up in a T-pose. Her hair fluffy, not square, pale, pink, pink, her eyes diamonds. An apparition chasing him with less than three eyes. A gem in her belly, like his.

"It's time to come out, pink."

He wakes with a start.

Strong, solid, warm arms are holding him to a bright pink chest, like a baby. Cradled. He feels cold and warm, like he's been in a hot space for a long time and just recently left it.

He wonders if Garnet is okay. He left them behind. He's always leaving someone behind.

Pink.

Steven watches her move, the slight shifts of her body changing his position against her chest. Her hair looks so silky up close, curly like it would form ringlets if someone coaxed it into them. Not loose ones, like Rose's, but tight ones, maybe an inch and a half across. A cluster of hair springs free of her shoulder as she reaches for something.

He hears the crackling of a disturbed fire.

For a moment, he is content. For a moment he can enjoy being alive, awake, and not in clear danger. But every moment must end, and it takes him less than a minute to start thinking a little too hard about just who Pink Diamond is, and how many awful things he's suffered because of her.

He takes a deep breath.

_Be an adult about this._

"You're still here," he says, despite himself.

She chuckles. "It's not like there's anywhere to go."

He shakes his head. Slowly, with aches in every limb, Steven climbs off of Pink's lap. She steadies him with one large hand.

"Careful! You did almost die of hypothermia."

Steven grunts, feeling small, not looking at her.

Her hand doesn't leave his back until he's standing upright by the fire. It's more of a bonfire, really, filling the middle of the room with strong heat, tall as Pink while she sits cross-legged next to it. He pulls his jacket tighter around him.

"Is there food on this planet?" he asks.

"Food?" Pink frowns. "Well I suppose so, if you're down for eating spruce tips."

Wild how that goes.

"Are there any animals here? I can't live off of spruce tips..."

"Not except you," Pink tries to joke. It falls flat, mostly because Steven doesn't want her to think he likes her.

Steven sinks down into a crouch. "Well, it's better than starving," he says. He feels sick and empty. He can't believe he got himself stuck in another stupid situation again. And now he's going to die of malnourishment on an ice planet with a crazy gem pretending to be his mother.

"I'll get some," she says. He thinks to argue, since it's his meal, but she's already standing. He expects her to head out the makeshift metal door, but instead she walks deeper into the cave, and disappears.

Again.

Steven gets up and runs after her. "Hey, wait!"

She stops, her gem's glow illuminating the cave. Her eyes glitter.

He's panting by the time he catches up, despite the short distance. She acts so alien to him, standing there like she's not sure how to act around him, what to say, what to do. As she begins walking again, while he takes deep breaths, he notices just how strange she is. Alien to him, and he has to spend time around the other Diamonds. She's enigmatic. He can see his own face in hers, and he's dismayed by that, because nothing else about her is familiar. She has no sense of formality in the way she walks down the hallway. It's like she's gotten so used to being alone, she's stopped considering even the smallest sense of others. It reminds him of Spinel, in a way that sends a little shard of ice right into his spine. She moves like she knows every stone she passes.

She pushes aside a cloth along one wall and he's startled by the sight of sunlight. She holds it open, and he follows her into a greenhouse, full of low shrubbery and short conifers, shielded above by a thin sheet of glasslike ice.

He stares at it, dumbfounded. "How do you maintain this place? Does it melt in the summer? Do you have ice powers?"

"It is summer," She says.

He swallows.

They are silent for a few minutes while they clip the fresh ends off the trees. She's right: it doesn't seem like there's much at all that he could eat around here, besides these. It's citrus-y. He doesn't know if it's because it's alien, or because he's never had such young and fresh needles before, but it tastes way better and indeed nothing like that tea that he and Connie had in the woods when they fought Jasper.

Oh, if Connie were here things would be okay. Connie knows survival stuff. This is her zone of expertise. And if Connie was here, he would have someone to talk to about how crazy it is that a person who is maybe imitating his mother and maybe is his mother is a few trees away, collecting him food.

He has so many questions, and so much anger, and he's not sure how to address either issue. He follows her back to the front of the cave, arms full of greens.

"You can't really be pink Diamond, then." Steven says. He's holding a cup of hot water. He threw a few tree bits in there, for flavor, but he doesn't think it was quite enough to make a meaningful difference. Maybe-Pink is still pushing at the fire with her fingers. "You have to be someone shapeshifted to look like her. Pink Diamond is dead." He puts a hand to his belly. Pink's eyes follow the movement.

She doesn't look up at him, pushing a log in the fire especially hard.

Her lips are pursed. Thick and painted. He is cross-comparing her every detail to the details that were in Pearl's memories. She looks less glossed, in this version. More like a person, wearing clothing, in an environment. She looks and sounds and acts so like the image of his mother that he's developed. She is uncannily like Rose Quartz, and yet utterly different. He's not actually sure an imitator could get it this close.

There is weight in her shoulders, but that weight is not the same, nor does she carry it the same way. She seems lonely, a trait he would never think to assign to his mother. And she is alone here, or so it seems. No one else has come in the room since he got here. There is no indication whatsoever that anyone else is living here, gem or human, at all.

"I'm not... _her_ , if that's what you mean," Pink says, pointing a finger at Steven's hand, still covering his gem. "But I am Pink Diamond."

Steven frowns. "Whatever. It doesn't matter who you are. Do you have a ship? A communicator? Any way to get me off this planet? I came out on a diplomatic mission with Garnet and some other gems, if I can even call them they can come get me, and I'll be off this dumb planet, and everything can go back to how it was."

She blinks.

"No."

Steven taps his fingers along the back of his neck. "Could we figure out how to make one? To salvage one from my shipwreck, maybe?"

"That," she bites her bottom lip. "That would be good, you could go back to your home and your family. We should do that."

"You're just going to agree with me?"

"Yes? You're right, this isn't your home, and you can't live here. You said yourself that you can't live off spruce tips. Earth is your home, and you should get back to it. I don't want to keep you from everything you know and love."

"...Right," he says.

This was going way too easy.


	2. Atlas Weeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sweet dreams are made of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a graphic depiction of white diamond hurting a character. walk in with care my bubs

Outside is gorgeous, lit up and sparkling, now that the snow has stopped. And, rejuvenated by coniferous snacks, Steven feels well enough to float, so he joins Pink in walking across the surface of the snowbanks. He doesn't have words for her, and she seems not to have words for him, either, staring out at the horizon with that same loneliness seeped into her being that he had seen before. She doesn't seem eager to address it, or to explain how she got here to this planet in the first place. He has a feeling it's going to be bad, whatever it is. She said she wasn't his Pink. He's not sure what she meant by that, but he can make a few guesses, and none of them are good.

He's not sure what he was expecting of Pink. Maybe that she would be excited to see him. Or that she would act like a child. She looks so... mature. More like Rose Quartz than any image of Pink Diamond he's ever seen. He's reminded of the stories his dad told him about his mother, and not the half-dream memories he occasionally has of being her.

His shipwreck isn't as far from her cave as he thought it was. It felt like he pushed his bubble such a long distance, but it really wasn't much more than two miles. It barely takes twenty minutes for the two of them to walk there.

The skipper looks just as wrecked as Steven remembers it being. He flinches when Pink rips the communications hub right out of the broken control panel without effort. It shouldn't bother him. He's sure, at this point in his life, that they are at very least equal in strength. He could have done the same thing with just as little effort and no doubt he would have if he had reached the cockpit first, but it scares him nonetheless.

"I've never seen a ship like this," Pink says. She's exploring the pink remnants of the cockpit with the communications system held on one shoulder.

"It's a new kind of single-user star skipper," he laughs. "You know, I crashed the prototype for this kind of ship when I was fourteen... To think I'd be doing the same thing a decade later."

She smiles at him, and he remembers another part of being stranded on that planet. That was the first time he actually saw her face. She looks happy, this time. Her face falls though, when her eyes meet his.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," She says, and turns back to the cockpit.

He has to wonder what kind of expression he was wearing, for her to react like that.

He's upset with her.

For not telling him that she was Pink Diamond. For hurting so, so many people. For leaving them alone, just for him. He doesn't feel like it's appropriate that he exists. He didn't ask to be made, even if he's glad to be alive. He wishes it could have been different and knows that nothing would have been fixed if he wasn't born.

Is that what he's for?

To fix things?

He'd been asking that question for years. The only real answer he's ever gotten to it is 'don't forget yourself.' At least his life doesn't feel like a plot line, anymore. His life is awkward explanations at Connie's workplace about just who Stevonnie is and why they should be allowed to work her desk. Or, after his growth spurt, why Stevonnie wasn't coming in anymore. His life is dive bars in Illinois. His life is casual intergalactic trips to help gems figure out their lives, or for vacations to a less than human territory, where no one will ask any weird questions about the gem in his navel. It's Camp Pining Hearts episodes with Peridot in a hotel bedroom while she insists on attacking him with every pillow she can find. He thought he was done with space plight. He thought he was done with Pink Diamond. And yet, here he is, and here she is, and he doesn't know how to feel.

She should be dead. That was how the world was right: With Pink Diamond _not in it_. This woman, this version of his mother, said she wasn't _her_. As they walk back towards Pink's cave, he wonders what exactly that means. He has to get it out of her. She's been skirting around it since he woke up. She knows who he is, but everyone in the galaxy knows who he is, at this point. It's been eight years, and he's still never met a gem who doesn't recognize him.

The sound of the metal door slamming shut behind them makes Steven flinch.

"Oh- Sorry," Pink says. "I guess I'm a little too used to being alone here. I'll try to shut the door less aggressively."

"Well at least you acknowledge that you're aggressive."

Pink puts down her piles of ship junk. "It's- not exactly like I have anyone to be aggressive to," she says. "Am I doing a bad job communicating? I'm sure you have questions, I just, don't like to talk about my past."

"You never have," he says. "And that's why I had to fix all of your problems in the first place, isn't it?" He can feel his hands curling into fists. He is not going to hit her. He's _not_. It's not a fight that would go well for either of them.

"Whatever your Pink did, I can't be responsible for," Pink says. "I'm not her. I haven't been to Earth in five thousand years." She sits down on the floor with a breezy thud. "How is the Earth?"

"Alright," he says. "No thanks to you. You always hurt everyone. You hurt me, and you hurt Garnet and Pearl, and you _traumatized_ Volleball. You hurt the earth, and you, just, make _everything_ worse."

"What? Steven, I just met you. Who is volleyball?"

She's looking at him. He feels sick and weak and broken. Logically, he knows, he hasn't eaten anything substantial in more than a day, and logically, he knows, this person can't possibly know everything that he's talking about, especially if she's telling the truth. She's looking at him, with bright pink, diamond eyes, the same ones that scare him so much to see in his own face. Everything wrong in his life happened because of the diamonds.

"Pink pearl? The one that you cracked?"

"I--" she frowns. "Pink pearl? Oh no, my old pearl? Is that who you're talking about? She... is she alright?"

He stares back at her.

The worry etched into the lines of her face.

"She's fine," he says.

"How is... How is the other one? Crystal Gem pearl? My lovely renegade?"

"Now that you're gone? She's fine too."

Pink breathes out, like she's relieved. "Oh my stars." She breathes in. "And garnet? Garnet's alive? She's intact? Is she okay?"

"Garnet is okay. What - Did you think they wouldn't be?"

"In my -- Where I am from, they were all.... Shattered."

Steven frowns at the embers of the fire. He pokes them with his shoe, rather than responding. He doesn't know how to respond to something like that. Shattered.

"By you?"

"What? No. Blue-- Blue and yellow... I, I would never shatter -- I-" She puts a hand over her mouth. "We should work on getting you back home. My past isn't important. What's important is you get back to your family." She stands up. She walks to the pile of junk on the floor and starts sorting through it. Steven re-stokes the fire, putting on new tinder and logs. He watches her as she separates component parts out from each other and organizes them by type. Where she's from... How did she get here? He can vaguely remember being attacked by a dozen alternate Universe Stevens when he was a kid, and he has to assume that's the method by which Pink ended up here... Especially if there was an alternate Pearl, and an alternate Garnet. Did she travel back in time to fix something, and end up stranded in this universe?

"You used the time glass, didn't you?" he says.

She looks up. She doesn't say anything, but he can tell by the expression on her face that the answer is yes. He can tell that she really does not want to talk about it, but he can file that one away as confirmed. What happened to the timeline she left behind? Does anyone remain, there? Is she stranded here both in space and in time, or was it her choice to stay here? It makes him feel claustrophobic. He's not sure why.  


He gets the fire back to a slow burn, the room feeling warmer already, and then walks to where Pink is working.

"so, what's the plan?" He asks, trying to sound less frustrated and angry. They do need to work together, if he's going to get out of here, and so far she's seemed willing to help with everything.

"Well, we have everything we need-- We can use these wires to connect our makeshift microphone to the communication hub, I just need to split them, but I want to use the best materials, so I'm separating them out by type."

"I wasn't expecting this to be so much like earth tech," Steven says, sitting down across from her and grabbing a nearby leverage optimizer.

"We don't have wheels, that doesn't mean we don't have wires." She shrugs. "We don't always cover our wires, though, because many of the gems that are designed to work with electronic devices are immune to electric pulses."

"Are we?" Steven asks. "Or, are you?"

"No," Pink says. "Only yellow is."

"Not white?"

Pink's face clouds with some kind of emotion. Her eyes glass like she's remembering, lips pulled into a reserved frown. "I don't know."

Steven drops it. He knows how White Diamond can be, and it sounds like she's a can of worms Pink has no desire to open. Instead, he yanks a piece of sheet metal off of one of the scraps Pink had grabbed and begins picking away at its guts, separating things by the components she already has piled.

They pass the time in quiet.

His jeans have been consistently wet for the past few hours. He'd first pushed aside the sensation, but it's starting to seriously bother him. The room is still chilly, but now it's humid as well, and so damp. This planet smells just a little minty, everywhere, and he can't fathom why. Mint isn't the hardiest winter plant he's ever seen.

It only takes a few minutes for his fingers to freeze up from touching cold metal. He blows on them, rubs them together, gets up to tend the fire, sits down again. Pink Diamond is simply sitting on the floor, water slowly leeching further and further up her fancy poofy shorts. She seems completely focused on her work.

He watches her.

He watches the muscles in her arms flex as she tugs metal apart with a rending screech, and then watches how delicately she unclasps the wires from their circuitboards. Some of the wires at the bottom of her pile are damp with water.

"Don't you think we have enough stuff for a microphone?" Steven asks. He doesn't know why she's wasting time. He's tired of feeling vaguely sick, and he's tired of having wet knees, and he's tired of being cold.

"Oh- yes, probably," Pink says. He watches her put components together, not really understanding her process. She has her tongue between her teeth. She shapeshifts effortlessly to turn her fingers into screwdrivers and other tiny tools. It reminds him of Amethyst- or Bismuth. He wonders, suddenly, if Bismuth can produce a weapon out of her gem. There is so much he doesn't know that just makes natural sense to other gems.

He contemplates sitting down again, but instead he heads over to the control panel. It looks like it was pulled out of a spaceship, and then affixed to the rock wall with bent pieces of metal. There is one of those homeworld communicators, but when he picks it up, he loses a couple pieces in his hand. It was sitting fully assembled save for whatever actually held it together, from the looks of it.

"Why can't we fix this one?" he asks, holding it up.

"It's missing a core component, which was crushed into complete oblivion. I reassembled it because I was tired of looking at its pieces." She shrugs as one finger shrinks from a screwdriver to a normal finger shape. "You look exhausted, do you want to rest? We can start again tomorrow."

"We need to get this done. I need to get off this planet or I'm going to starve."

"You'll be no good working if you don't sleep, I know that about humans, at least."

Steven breathes in. He breathes out. She was right. He wasn't really helping her anyway, he was never the one in his little earth family that did the majority of the repairs. He wouldn't have suspected Rose of being that person either, though, and the fact that she is confused him a little. She knew what size _screwdriver_ to shapeshift for the project made of earth junk. If she was honest about not having been to the planet in 5000 years, it would make little sense for her to understand such a thing.

He walks to a miraculously dry spot of ground near the now roaring fire and curls into a ball. The floor, to his dismay, is frigid despite his proximity to the fire. He tries to warm himself by moving closer to the fire, but then he doesn't feel safe, because he's so hot on the side facing warmth. He rolls away again, still shivering.

He tries to sleep anyway.

After trying for thirty long minutes, Steven sits up. He looks over at Pink, who is still working on the microphone. She was the reason he could sleep last night, he realizes. She's the only thing that radiates heat besides the fire and his own body. He swallows. He's cold and exhausted and he feels constantly weak and she's sitting over there with her perfect gem body *doing things for him.* He's so tired.

He considers rolling over and trying to sleep close to the fire again, but he quickly pushes it aside. There's no way that he can sleep on the floor and trying will just make him crabbier. As much as he just wants to wallow in the shittiness of his situation it's not actually going to help him get out of it.

"Pink?"

She looks up as if surprised. "Steven! You're still awake."

"I can't sleep."

"Oh." She scratches at her face. "You slept fine yesterday."

"I think that was because of your body heat."

"Oh! Well I'll just move over there, then."

He feels a wave of half-numbed emotion sweep over him as he watches her shift her supplies closer to the fire. She is a tiny titan, twice his size but emanating the energy of one who has been ignored. She bends over her work like some enormous beast, eyes focused and so, so alien.

After a moment, he gathers himself enough to climb into her lap. He sees her smile, just a little, before turning into her body and burying his face in the frills at her hipbone. She's warm and alive, soft and dense with muscle and fat. She has small love handles that he hadn't noticed before. She's warm, like a giant heated pillow. Her gem is hard against his shoulder but he leans into it anyway. He feels disgusted with himself for wanting this so much. He thought he'd sorted through his mommy issues years ago, but he can't help be both angry and intoxicated by this strange version of his past self.

Her gem beats like a living heart.

She moves just as he's about to drift to sleep, and he wakes up again. He's so tired, all he can feel is annoyed. She snaps a metal piece into place with a loud clack and moves again. He curls tighter around her, gripping at her pantaloons. He realizes that he won't be able to sleep if she keeps working on the microphone.

Steven wants to punch something.

He takes a deep breath, and then lets it out. "I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep if you're working on the microphone," he mumbles into her hip.

"what?"

"I said, I'm not gonna be able to sleep if you work on that," he pulls his face out of yards of lacy chiffon.

"O-oh," she says. "I'm sorry. I was hoping I could finish it while you were asleep, but..."

"We'll finish it tomorrow."

Pink doesn't respond, but she leans back until she's sitting straight, and stares at the fire. She's not smiling like last time he looked at her from this angle. Her lips are pursed, eyebrows creased in an up.

He turns back into her frilly adornments.

Steven awakens feeling warm and comfortable. He can hear a steady drip in the distance, and the fire up close. Pink is still, watching him, and she blinks when he looks up at her. He wonders what she did all night, if anything. He knows other gems are.... weird about time and sleep, but it's still eerie to him, a human.

He doesn't want to get up. He feels heavy with tiredness still, despite being rested.

He sits up.

"Alright. How close are you to being done with that microphone?"

Pink jolts out of her gem stupor. She blinks at him. She looks just a little bit like white, in that moment, she has the same kind of shock on her face. He's tempted to reach up and grab her face, to reassure himself that she's small, or maybe that she doesn't care and won't hurt him if he does.

"It's just about finished," she says.

He climbs off Pink's lap and wiggles his damp toes inside his shoes. He's really tired of being here. "Let's get that done, then," he says. He turns the embers of the fire over and tosses another log on the flames.

Pink makes quick work of whatever she had left to do. She plugs it into the console using the wires from the previous communicator, and taps it a couple times. The screen lights up with gem glyph terms he doesn't understand, very homeworld-esque and probably technical terms that are nothing like the pidgin he's used to speaking on Earth. She hums, fussing with settings and tapping her long fingers on the mic. He sees waveforms jump, and his heart jumps a little with them-- Maybe he'll be going home soon. Maybe tonight. Tomorrow. He crouches next to Pink and eats vegetables while she fiddles with stuff.

He watches as her frown deepens, little red warning lights popping up on her screen. "Well, the microphone is working," she says.

"Great. We can contact Garnet, then."

"Ah," Pink laughs a little, unhappy sound. "I think the communication tower is down again."

Steven's heart sinks, and he can feel that same sensation of wrongness that he's spent years trying to cope with and fix bubbling to the surface. He takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out slow. She didn't plan this. He has to believe that she didn't plan this.

Does he?

He has no reason to believe she wants to do anything but keep him on this barren rock. She seems so lonely. It's what he would want to do, if he had been trapped on this planet for as long as she had. And even if she had been trying to make things better, Pink Diamond was never someone worth trusting. Why was he cooperating with someone like Pink Diamond? She's an ex-tyrant, and the ex is almost as tentative as it is for the other three, even now. He needs to breathe. He doesn't want to explain turning pink to her, not now, and he _especially_ doesn't want her to _know what it is,_ to relate to the horrid feeling of buzzing under his gemstone.

He clenches his fists in his damp pockets. She's getting up, going to the entrance of the cave and shoving the door open. His eyes follow her, mute with anger and frustration.

"I'll go repair it. You're welcome to come, it's sunny out today."

He thinks he would like to not be around her. But he wants to be around her more than he wants to be alone. Still. It still remains the case that she's done nothing _overt_ to signal she's not on his side. He thinks about bluebird, for a moment. He thinks of the time that Pearl hurt Garnet by remaking the communication hub on earth for the sake of fusion. Is Pink being nice, and running into roadblocks, or is she being purposefully obstructive of his goals? He doesn't know, but he follows her out the door.

Pink Diamond is sitting cross-legged at the top of the mountain, a bright pink splodge against expanses of white and the blueish purple sky. She's pulling pillars out of the snow with her hands.

Steven jumps up to meet her, settling in the snow.

"This happens sometimes," she says, standing to tear another pillar out of piles of snow. They're stacked up in a pile like strange teal logs.

"It does."

"Yes, there are a lot of storms on this planet. It's not hard to fix. If you want to help, once I find the connection for the center column we can just line the rest up."

"...Sure," Steven says, picking up a pillar with a practiced movement. He can feel her watching him and he fights the urge to comment on it. He stands next to the pile of pillars while Pink leans forward and pushes the snow right off the hill haphazardly. She cleans out the edges of the socket with a finger, picks up the center pole, and fits it into place. The snow around the connection clears in a blast of air and warmth.

Steven winces back a little, but the passing breeze isn't hot enough to be painful.

Pink leans back on her heels and puts her hands on her hips, grinning at him. He huffs and carries the pillar he's holding to the closest slot.

They settle into a rhythm lasting most of the day. Steven watches and eats tree trimmings, or helps for hours on the repetitive tasks that don't need a lot of knowledge of gemtech to engage in. Pink works tirelessly to fit everything into place, going back and forth to check connections and stability.

It's nearly sundown when Pink finally places the last pillar, checks its alignment, and jumps off the structure with a loud "Woot!" Her impact on the snow sends another flurry of wind up and blows snow in Steven's face.

"Oh, oops!" Pink chuckles. Her face is flushed and rosy, her eyes sparkling. She looks like she might actually be having fun.

Steven is suddenly hit with a wave of feeling that grips at his heart and buoys his mood into the sky. He has to steady himself against one of the poles before the intensity of the emotion settles into something less all-encompassing. He smiles back at Pink. Is this what she's feeling? Should he be concerned that she's going to force him to stay after all? He shakes his head, breaking himself out of the spell. What was that? Was that his hyperempathy or her psychic ghost powers? His exhaustion and frustration crash back down around him like a thousand lead balloons.

"Do you want to call garnet tonight?"

He looks at Pink, who seems to have sobered somewhat. He looks at the tower they spent the day assembling. He can think of a few towers he's -arguably- helped with, like the one at little homeschool, but the image that comes to mind when he thinks of a gem communication tower, especially one this old, is that of Pearl stepping out of Peridot's escape pod.

It would be good to be back with the gems. It would be good to be able to have food. But it's only been two days, and as he looks into her eyes, he realizes he wants to stay a little longer.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She's getting to him. Steven runs his hands down his face.

"Call her tomorrow?" he says.

Pink's eyebrows shoot up. He watches emotions flash across her face, and realizes that they're _always_ there, hovering just under the surface of his skin. He feels the mood of her thoughts through surprise, confusion, and resolution. He clenches his fingers into fists. He knows so little about her thought process.

"Alright," she says. _Relaxed_. He is hyperaware of these feelings now, the ones that aren't actually his. "I was thinking about sleeping tonight," she adds as she slides down the side of the mountain.

"Sleeping?"

"Yes! I used to do it, on earth. It's a good way to pass the time, and since you're already sleeping because you're human..." She shrugs.

"I don't know. Sleep comes with a lot of stuff you might not want to deal with."

"You sleep every night!"

"Because I have to, not because I want to," he says.

Pink doesn't respond to that. She holds the door open for him, and he wanders inside. The fire, needy as it is, is already starting to die. Mumbling something about firewood, Pink immediately disappears down the hall, leaving him alone.

The fire cracks and sparks. He pokes it with a stick. He adds another log, one of the last from the pile. Pink is right, they're going to need more wood to last the night.

He considers trying to call garnet while she's out of the room. Garnet could probably help him figure out his feelings in a way he's sure Pink cannot. Garnet knows what he's been through in his life, and cares about him too. Would the betrayal be worth it? It would definitely make Pink very angry if he did call after saying he wouldn't. She definitely wants to keep him trapped here with her. Why else would she have been so happy to be around him? It's not like he's worth anything beyond his service to the happiness of others...

He shakes himself. Those are intrusive thoughts.

He can't get them out of his head.

His heart beats in his throat, and he tangles a hand in his hair, tugging the ringlets apart. He stares at the controls to the console and tries to cope with the dazed sensation of his thoughts.

A clattering sound fills the near silent room and Steven jumps, whipping around, drawing his shield from his gem and ready for danger, but it's just Pink, who looks as startled as he feels, standing next to a newly replenished pile of firewood. He banishes his shield. Pink lets out a breath he didn't realize she was holding.

"Are you okay?" They ask, simultaneously.

A flash of amused energy fills the room. Steven chuckles.

He feels awkward. "Were we going to sleep?" he asks.

"Oh! yes. Remind me...?"

"Lie down, close your eyes, don't move, and don't think about anything?"

"Right," she says, like she doesn't really understand.

Pink lies down next to the fire with her hands folded on her chest. She really has no tits in this form, Steven notes. He instantly feels awkward for noticing something like that.

"I guess I should just lie... on top of you?" Steven says.

Pink pats her chest. He feels like a cat, climbing up onto her body and curling up around her gem. He can feel his clink against hers. He feels even more like a cat when Pink puts her hand on his head and starts running her fingers through his hair.

He blushes. "Don't do that," he says.

"Doesn't it feel good?"

"Yes? But it's embarassing."

"Really? I'm sorry."

He curls more. "Let's just sleep."

Pink breathes out.

She's warm. He can feel his body against her, absorbing the heat until he feels sleepy with it. But sleep doesn't come as easily to him as he wishes it would.

_ Come on, Steven. It's not the first time that you've been alone in space with a pseudo-stranger. _

Maybe it's worse that it's not the first time, though. He's starving and freezing and lying across a giant war criminal, a runaway bride, a doppelganger, some kind of identical, evil twin, the mother he never had, and she's sleeping, her eyes shut, long dark lashes still against pink cheeks. He runs a thumb up and down her gem. The facets, though the same, look so different when the gem is turned to the side. The reflections inside its translucent form make an optical illusion. Just like her form itself, however warm and solid it may feel, is merely solid light focused into a body.

Steven is only terrified of Pink because he knows himself. He knows that he is a shatterer. He knows that he is a broken mess. Most importantly, he knows that she has at least as much power and anger and self-neglect as he does, at least in the form that currently sits under his shirt.

He tangles his hand in the fabric next to his gem. The flesh below his pinky is pressed into the warm facets of Pink's diamond. He's never going to fall asleep like this.

He lies still, and wishes he were home.

He's in Pink Diamond's room, and that's how he knows, right away, that it's a dream. Unfortunately, knowing that does not mean he can control anything about them, most of the time. Neither Pearl nor Volleyball is present. He wanders towards the window, staring out at a perfectly detailed landscape, empty arenas and traffic rolling past without notice. He wonders if this is going to be a true memory, or if his own thoughts are going to intermingle with them. He has some kind of answer: He's lucid.

The door to the room opens.

"Starlight, it's time for our appointment!"

He feels his posture change dramatically. Shoulders snap back, body straight. A little sliver of fear slips out of his spine and overtakes his body. He feels intensely afraid, in a not wholly familiar sense. He turns around as if his limbs are controlled by strings, bouncing on his heels. He scurries to White Diamond, standing in the doorway. His thoughts bloom with love and fear twisted together like a candy braid. Standing at her heel, the feeling coagulates into a sort of dread.

"Yes, my diamond!" he calls out, still bouncing. Steven realizes which side of the family he got ADHD from, and is upset when he can't laugh. Instead, he walks out the door when White steps aside, and then follows her through the labyrinthine corridors of the Gem palace. He follows her up a dozen stairs and into a large chamber, similar to his own, with a single chair in the center. The space feels familiar, and he's incapable of moving his head how he wants to, locked into whatever movements his body decides to make of its own accord.

White sits in the chair. Her legs folded, hands on the arms. She smiles at him so sweetly, and he feels some kind of pride. He doesn't move, waiting for something, maybe. The feeling of dread has only increased despite the sensation of relief. He can't decipher the wash of feelings moving through him.

White pats her leg.

Steven scurries forward, anticipation building under his skin, tingling through his form like jolts of lightning. Then he feels a forced kind of calm, something he recognizes from training himself in his powers, and he jumps up onto White's leg with competent floating skills. It must not be the most distant of memories, for Pink. In a lot of the older diamond dreams he has, she flails about like she's terrified she's going to fall the whole time.

He feels a hand against his back once his body is settled. Long, large fingers wrapped around his torso, a single nail pressing into his arm in a way that neither he nor the emotions he is catching from Pink like at *all.* The feelings he gets from the sensation exactly line up, this time, with the emotional response he receives.

"You remember the rules, right, Starlight?" White says, booming voice above him, fingers stroking down his backbone.

"Hold together as long as I can," he feels himself say. He feels resolution, but his thoughts are racing at the implications of the situation. What does that mean? What is White Diamond about to do to him? All he can tell is that whatever it is, it's worth dreading, and Pink is at this point in her life _used to it._

Steven is used to a lot of things. Steven is used to dreams that are at least similar to this one. But whatever 'hold together' means in this context, he is sure he is not ready.

His body is _tense_ as he feels White Diamond's nails click against his gem. This is more familiar than he would prefer. This is way too familiar. He wants to wake up, now, and realize that this is definitely just a dream, and not have to relive anything horrible that anyone went through. His body doesn't struggle, though. He looks down, following the guidance of a memory, and realizes despite all his lucidity, despite knowing this definitely happ _ ened _ , to Pink Diamond, and not to him, his body is still his, twenty-three years old with ringlet curls tumbling over his broad shoulders.

His eyes close. Teeth tighten against each other in his mouth. And then, instead of the pull that he is expecting, he feels White's nails _press_. Into his flesh. Scratching against his gem, and sliding into his physical form around it.

He feels it immediately-- the need to discorporate, like an itch in the back of his head. Pink is already fighting it off, though, before he even recognizes it for what it is.

All he can do is sit absolutely still, save for a tremor, as the nails dig deeper into his skin. The feeling in the back of his brain grows with each passing moment, singing sensation out of his body like flame.

"You're doing so much better than last time already," he hears White say from somewhere too far away to seem like a part of his real sensory input. "You'll be a real Diamond, soon."

He is biting his lip.

His hands are balled into fists at his hips, gripping the fabric of his pantaloons. He is steeled to put up with a sensation that is so violating that his very form wants to cease in response to it. And yet, his gem glows at the praise. He is perversely glad that she is hurting him if it will make her tell him that he is doing well. Make her. Tell him. As if her praise is worth her attention. He wants to puke, but his body is too focused on a memory of pain.

His dreamself.

He wishes diamond dreams weren't so memorable and lucid. He hates to think that he might be so close to the woman whose feelings he is currently experiencing. He can feel that his body is crying, or her body, whatever is going on, whatever poorly justified torture this tyrant is pushing onto his mother. Pushing. Her nails, thick and black, ripping him asunder. There is no going back.

Pain washes over him in waves. Somewhere in his form, he feels two of White's nails touch each other. He's holding tense, he's a numb kind of afraid. He is this close to losing it.

She turns his gem to the left, just a few degrees. Pressure builds in his body, and then, with a sensation of release, or maybe like unconsciousness, there is nothing.

Waking up is not sudden. He's tugged back to consciousness one sense at a time, like he's reforming his body in pieces; it's eerie, following the dream he is still panicking about. He wonders if he is still stuck in his dream, if his gemself is half-remembering the feeling of reformation as he settles into the sense of his limbs, his clothes, the floor against his hip. Someone large and warm is holding him tight against their chest, and his heartbeat spikes. The dream is over, he's awake, he hasn't been kidnapped or tortured in a dozen years, but his body refuses to calm down. Instead of struggling or attacking he stays absolutely still.

Waves of fear and worry crash into him, sucking him further into an abyss. They aren't his. It isn't his fear or worry. He struggles to feel something else, anything else, something that isn't a remnant of Pink's old memories still festering in his brain, or whatever that dream was.

He clenches his jaw. Distress is the emotion that manages to cut through all the chaff, and he hears a little gasp above him, arms loosening. The fear descends beneath the worry and the emotion in the room shifts.

Sour telepathy, that's what it is. Whatever this connection he has with this fucking woman, it leaves him sick and overwhelmed. And he had almost managed to forget she was in the room. Not just sequestered in his gem, but staring at him as he sits up, one hand tangled in her damp curls. They stick to his hand like cobwebs when he tries to pull free, and then release with a second tug, bouncing back into place.

Pink looks soggy and sad.

He almost has the energy to pity her, but instead puts his head in his hands. The dream is still vivid behind his eyelids.

"I forgot about the memories," Pink says, in a way that makes her sound like she's actively trying not to sound small. He recognizes that feeling. He's resentful of his own empathy, because he could easily blame her for most of his trouble in life if it weren't for that. He knows that would be easier. The universe never wants anything to be easy.

"Do you mean dreams?" He asks, a little saltier than appropriate.

She seems to recognize the word. She wrinkles her nose, just a little bit, and looks at the floor with force.

Something occurs to him.

"Did you dream about White Diamond?"

Her stare flicks to him, intense and unreadable, her lower lip tucked under her incisors. Her jaw works slightly back and forth but she doesn't actually bite down. The pink lipstick she seems to always be wearing is still there when she stops wiggling her lip between her teeth, and he looks at her eyes. She'd noticed him staring at her lips.

He has no idea what kind of connotation such a thing has for gems, so he doesn't bother to make any comment.

"Yes," she says.

He'd almost lost track of the conversation, but manages to pick the thread back up. "I had a dream about White Diamond. I was you in the dream."

Pinks eyes fall to the floor again, sluggish this time. Her body relaxes, but she doesn't look relieved in the slightest. "I am sorry."

He turns himself around. He's cold, and he's hungry, but something is going on here and he needs to know if he should be concerned.

"Did we share a dream?"

Pink nods. "I was.... you. But it was my memory." She shudders. "I was wearing your skin... I hope you have never gone through that in real life."

"Not exactly," Steven says. "Are you okay?"

Pink laughs and runs a hand through her hair, strands sticking the way they had to his. It stays stuck down against her skull for a moment, a look that almost makes Steven laugh. He's not used to thinking about the tiny details of some gems that are so human, but Pink is so round and realistic compared to many he has met. It would be more uncanny if it wasn't obvious she's made some edits to her form to accommodate that. Pores, fingernails under her gloves, body hair. Little things that make her seem like a human with a gem in her belly, like him, instead of a gem with a humanoid form.

"Not exactly." She pushes herself into a sitting position. "But I'm more worried about you. Ever compassionate Steven Universe. What happened to you that made that so familiar?"

"Nothing."

"I can feel your emotions, Steven."

"It's none of your business."

Pink looks at him with big, intelligent eyes and a small frown.

He caves. "White Diamond did... hurt me once. It was similar. But I don't talk about it with people. It's not something I want to talk about."

"Are you sure?"

He closes his eyes.

He feels a warm hand settle on his shoulder.

"Did that really happen to you?" He asks. "White Diamond tortured you for some kind of... training?"

"I always knew I was an inadequate Diamond," Pink says. "It's not as if I regret that fact."

His body is tingling, overwhelmed, as the first tear of the day starts to run down his cheek. He is heavy, tugged to the center of this snowy planet by a decade of grief and longing.

Pink reaches out and tugs him onto her lap. He moves with her, wraps his arms around her torso and presses his face into her sternum. He doesn't need her permission to cry, even though it gets harder to remember that with each year he spends away from the gems. He's twenty six, and he's going to sob into her light-constructed bandeau. This is simply a fact.

He feels her put her face down into his hair.

Arms curl around his body. He sinks into her and cries.

It feels like days before they stop crying, but he notices when it's over, because at some point Pink says "I don't think I like sleeping," and it makes him snort. He stares at the wall, body lax in her arms, disinterested in the idea of movement. He has to move eventually though, because he's hungry, and they need to call Garnet.

"White Diamond isn't colonizing planets anymore, then," Pink says. She's breathing in and out, as if she has real organic lungs.

"No."

"how on earth did you convince her to stop? She's the most stubborn rock I've ever met."

"I called her a child."

Pink laughs. "What?? That wouldn't work. I know that from experience."

"Well I mean, I said, she also... pulled out my gemstone," Steven says. his hand gravitates down without his permission. Hidden under his shirt.

He feels numb. He watches her stare at her hands, watches her expression, head underwater. He listens to the sound of his pounding heart.

"She did that to me, too," she says. She laughs. "I mean, she liked to poof me. You, you saw."

"I saw," Steven says.

They sit.

"What does it mean for an organic like you to have your gem removed?" Pink asks.

"I almost died," he says, not feeling up to elaborating. He looks at her face after a moment, though, watching her process that information. He can almost feel her tuck it away in her mind, and with a spike of perhaps irrational fear wonders if he's given away a secret that is going to be used against him later.

She puts a big hand on his head. He can tell that she wants him to feel that he is safe. He wants to believe her too. He wants to be safe, but it's hard to imagine a world where he could be, even now.

"You should call Garnet," Pink says, running her hand down his hair like he's a cat. "She's probably worried about you."

"What am I going to tell her?"

"That's up to you," Pink says. "I'm going to go to the greenhouse."

He's disappointed by that. In the end, though, it's better if he gets off this planet without any trace of the Diamond following him out. She doesn't want to be discovered, and it's not his job to leak her secret. Nothing changes if she is never found. The world goes back to normal, and no one has to know.

But is that the Pink in him speaking?

He puts a hand on his gem.

He won't tell Garnet.... for now.

The communicator is the straightforward, antiquated gemtech of his childhood: the sort of thing he remembers from those months when Peridot was still homeworld-bound, trying to salvage what was left of gem life on Earth. He can open up the ship pinger, and it takes sifting through a hundred different transports before he finds a home screen featuring the gems he knows. He can see Garnet's elbow, just offscreen where she works the front panel, and he feels a wave of relief sweep over his entire body.

Steven glances behind him, but Pink is still nowhere to be seen, so he presses the connect button.

"Hey? Can you hear me? This is Steven Universe." Awkward, nervous, oh well-- it gets the attention of a few different gems, including Garnet.

"Steven!" She gasps, her relief tangible to him even from miles away. He can't stop the grin breaking across his face.

"Garnet! It's so good to see you!"

"I'm so glad you're alright! We haven't been able to contact you in days now."

Steven chuckles. "Yeah, I kinda hit an asteroid belt and crash landed on a barren planet. It took a few days to get a working comm system going." It's hard to express exactly how excited he is to see Garnet, but he doesn't want to bounce up and down on his toes and grin like a ten year old, more because he's too tired than for any social reason. He can't wait to get off this barren snow rock. He can't wait to eat an actual sandwich or something, and to see his crew again.

"You might have to sit tight for a little bit," Garnet says, snapping Steven to attention, "because our warp systems are being fritzy again. But you couldn't have gotten very far from us in that star skipper, so it shouldn't be more than a few days. I'm pulling up your coordinates."

"Oh, alright. That's okay," Steven says. He can't expect things to work out perfectly all the time. He doesn't expect things to work out perfectly all the time. When has that ever happened? Something goes wrong, every time. That's his life and he's used to it.

"Steven."

He looks up.

"I'm not going to let anything else go wrong. We're coming to get you."

He knows she can't actually guarantee such a thing, but he feels relieved nonetheless. "Thanks, Garnet," he says, staring at the bottom corner of the screen rather than her face.

"I take it you're not in your ship anymore."

He looks back up. She's leaning her head against her hand, leisurely, and he realizes that there's no reason why they should hang up upon divesting this important information. "No. I was rescued by a gem, actually. This planet isn't great for supporting life, but she's been living here for a long time and knows her way around."

"You found the distress call that you were looking for then."

"No, not exactly. This gem doesn't want attention. I don't think she's disappointed to have company, though, it's been a few thousand years."

"Hm," Garnet says. "Well, she's always welcome if she wants a trip somewhere more habitable. There is always room for one more on this ship."

Steven smiles.

They talk for a while. A couple of the other crewmembers pop in and out of the stream, especially Greenie, a particularly nasty Pearl with a complex who nonetheless shoved her way into their hearts, and a Seraphinite who can be a little passive aggressive without realizing they're doing it. It's nice to see some familiar faces.

"Well, I guess I should get something to eat," Steven says after almost an hour of talking. "I haven't had breakfast yet." He chuckles.

"Call me soon?" Garnet says.

"Yeah! I'm so glad I can." Contentment sits in his chest like a tingling warmth. "Thanks for talking with me."

"Of course, Steven. I love you."

"I love you too, Garnet." He grins. Then he turns the communicator off, and turns towards the tunnel.

A few days. He can do a few days. This crash is nothing more than a hiccup, and everything will be back to normal soon.

Now he just has to tell Pink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> steven still lookin for a purpose


	3. In Exchange For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven tries to work out his feelings about Pink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter contains NSFW!

Pink is sitting surrounded by green and gray in the garden room, like an accent element in a photograph on a senator's wall. He's reminded of Spinel, and wonders again exactly what this woman may have done with her power on Homeworld when she had it. He doesn't know her at all.

Maybe it is time that he got to know her.

The idea makes him anxious, though. This is the woman who did everything so thoroughly wrong before he was born, at least in some regard. He had never thought about whether he really forgave her because he had never had to worry about interacting with her in person. A dead woman wasn't going to be upset at him for hating her. But this is a living person, picking leaves of some hardy winter plant and putting them in a basket, right in front of him.

Yesterday, he had cried himself to sleep against her.

She is an echo of an idea of what a mother might be like, contrasted by the relationships he has to Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst. Especially after a long conversation with Garnet, he's reminded of how alien this person is. Garnet is and always has been far more of a mother to him than any iteration of Pink has ever been. For the first fourteen years of his life, he did not even have an image of his mother as a Diamond at all. Even before that, he never had a chance to meet her.

This woman is a stranger. He has known this the whole time, and yet it's hard to think of her like that. He has been dreaming her dreams for fifteen years. There have been dozens, hundreds of people who thought of him as being her, including himself at points. She's a stranger but she is his closest acquaintance. In a sense, he contains her, in her entirety. In a sense, the person whom he contains is not her at all and never has been. A parent, in abstract, a child in theory, and a mysterious benefactor, or maybe malefactor, in practice. He's looking at his evil twin.

Well, Evil isn't necessarily fair. After all, if she's the evil twin, he could be said to be as well. He's done enough horrible things in his life to justify that. But she's done a lot of worse things, so he's not sure. They're also definitely not the same age. They're morally gray siblings that kind of fit a "long lost twin" stereotype dynamic, but with a little bit of crazy time stuff thrown in. And also she's his mother.

His mind wanders back to the dream they shared. There is no separating himself from her anymore. At least, not beyond the universe of the tangible, and not here, on this planet.

"Are you hungry?" Pink asks, holding up a woven basket of greens.

"Where did you get that basket?"

"I made it a few hundred years ago, I think." She shrugs.

He takes a deep breath. Gems. "Garnet says that she can be here in a few days. In the meantime, I need to stay alive, and not go crazy. Do you have any ideas?"

"For, recreation?"

"Yeah. What do you do when you're bored here?"

Pink bites her lip. "I listen to radio signals, mostly. I sit in the front room of this cave and I try to figure out what is going on in the universe by the transmissions being sent to the outer colonies. But around eight years ago, all of that changed. I was lost until I received the message. These days the transmission signals don't seem to come, as if the colonies were just abandoned." She pauses. "But I don't want to do that when someone else is here, anyway."

Steven studies her face. He can tell she's ashamed; it's washing off of her in waves. He wants to hug her a little bit, but he doesn't think hugs are the best solution in this particular situation.

He thinks to himself. Is there anything that he does for fun which is still accessible to him, here, without any of the tools and toys he usually engages with?

"Do you like to sing?" he says. "Sometimes, when I'm feeling down, I write a song."

"Sing?"

"Yeah! We could dance, if you want."

"I do like to dance," she says.

Steven grins. He steps into the center of the greenhouse, reaches out his hand, and begins to sing.

_ While we're stranded on this world, _

_ it's something to do, _

_ why don't you just take my hand _

_ and let me dance with you? _

It's not what he wanted it to be, and it's certainly not his best improv, but he's had a long week, and he just wants to cheer up his unexpected friend.

She blushes. "Are you sure?" she asks, fiddling with her pantaloons.

"Yeah! come on!"

She stands up. He's only intimidated by her height for a moment. He's danced with taller gems. She falls right in sync with the movement of his feet. He spins in her hand, pulling his hair out of its ponytail for a bit of extra flair. It bounces around his shoulders and hips, already almost as long as Rose Quartz's hair is in the pictures and just as curly. For a while he kept it as short as he could but eventually he gave up, decided it was worthwhile to let himself enjoy something even if his mother had the same. He loves his shield, he loves his gem, and he loves his hair, too, even if it looks like hers.

He starts singing again.

_ you let me rest in your home _

_ sometimes I dream your dreams _

_ why don’t you just take my hand _

_ and dance the days away? _

It's just a little ditty, he reminds himself. It doesn't have to be poetic, it doesn't have to make sense. He feels embarrassed anyway.

Pink laughs, and for a second he expects a taunt, but she's grinning without a hint of malice. "It's been so long since I danced," she says, gripping his fingers a little harder.

Maybe there's more to like than just her hair, he thinks, but he shakes the thought from his head. This is not his mom.

She starts to sing.

_ Lately I've been oh so lost _

_ living on my own _

_ but despite the constant frost _

_ I call this place my home. _

Some kind of sensation swells up inside him. She's beautiful, her voice echoing the poor quality videos his dad keeps on cassette. He wants... Something, but her eyes flick away from him, and then she starts another voice, her tone heavy and dark.

_ but I want to hold you close _

_ you make me feel alive _

_ Just a ghost of your past self _

_ I wish that you could stay. _

His heart falls, the sensation slipping from him and leaving behind pins and needles. "I'm sorry," he says, at a loss. It takes him a moment to gather himself. They're still dancing, though Pink has slowed down somewhat.

He sings again.

_ You know that I can't be here, _

_ I'm withering away _

_ But when I'm warm in your arms _

_ I wish that I could stay.  _

Pink lets go of his hands. His heart picks up in his chest. Whatever song they had been trying to write together, it was over.

She sits down with a gust of wind on the hard floor of the greenhouse. He stands with his hands close to his chest and waits for her to say something, anything.

"You don't have to stay. I wouldn't wish my life on anyone."

He bites his lip.

He puts his hair back in its ponytail, missing a single strand and letting it fall in front of his face instead of starting over. The song is done, for sure, which is probably for the best. Maybe singing wasn't the best option.

He sits down next to Pink, puts a hand on her thigh.

"Would you wish it on yourself?"

She gives him that look again, the eerie one. Her pupils seem to shine in the wan sunlight bathing the greenery around them.

"Of course not. That's why I'm here in the first place."

"Aren't you your own person, though? You said yourself you're not my mom."

She takes a deep breath. One long-fingered hand combs through her curls, pushing them away from her forehead.

"I had to sacrifice my own autonomy for the sake of someone else," she says. "I'm at peace with that."

"Are you?"

She gives him a new look, lips pouting and eyebrows scrunched. She's not angry from what he can read of her emotions, more... confused.

"You still have the autonomy to make a different decision, right? I could take you off planet."

"That's not an option," she says immediately.

"Why not?"

"I have nowhere to go but another lonely planet like this one."

"Why is that?"

"Steven, it's not your problem to fix. The entire universe keeps expecting you to fix their problems over and over.... You don't need more on your plate."

"You saved my life."

"So? I'm not the first. You have bigger issues to deal with. I made peace with my loneliness ages ago. I don't want to think about it, because it hurts. So you should go. As soon as possible. Before I do something to hurt you, or myself, or anything alive here. I don't want to put you at risk because of my pain. I'm sorry you crash landed here. I'm glad I could save your life, but I'm sorry." She sighs.

Steven wants to tear his hair out. He's been there, and it's frustrating to hear someone not understand how important they are.

He takes a deep breath.

"You don't have to leave. But you deserve to be okay, even if you did bad things in your past. I want you to be happy. Despite every negative association I applied to you from my mother when I first met you, I have come to like you. And besides, Garnet offered you a ride. You could come to earth. We have a school for lost gems like you, people the old empire left behind."

"You told Garnet about me?"

"Not who you are. Just that I have company, and that you're a gem."

"Oh." She sounds a little disappointed, to his surprise. Maybe it would have been easier for her, to just know she was accepted despite her gem, her history, her reputation.

He offers her a wan smile.

They sit in the chilly room, Steven leaning against Pink's leg for warmth, snacking on vegetables and watching the sun slowly set. It's tranquil, but the atmosphere of the room is still heavy from the subject of the conversation.

"I want you to talk to someone," he says, maybe half an hour later. "I can't be the only one who knows that you're here."

He can feel Pink breathe in. He wonders just how much of her body she has made human, and why she bothered to keep it that way, all these centuries later. Doesn't it remind her of what she can't have? Is she just that infatuated with the human form?

"I do want to, I just can't."

"Why not?"

"I don't belong here."

"But you are anyway, and you're a person. Wouldn't it be nice to have *someone* to talk to?" He sucks in a breath. "Besides, it'll weigh on me. It'll have to happen eventually."

Her face is all scrunched up when he glances up at her. She looks like she's trying not to cry.

"It doesn't have to be garnet. It doesn't have to be someone you know. Or, it could be someone who you knew who didn't die in your timeline. Do you want to talk to Bismuth? You could talk to Little Larimar or Biggs, I mean, they're all there on Earth, living their lives. Amethyst-- I mean, I know an amethyst who would probably be curious to meet you. You could even talk to Volleyball, though, that's probably a bad idea."

"Who is Volleyball again?"

"Your uh, original pearl."

Pink's fingers scrape against her knees.

"How is pearl?"

"Volleyball?"

"No, the renegade pearl."

"She's doing great! She learned the bass guitar, and she's started working on albums with Greg-- That's my dad. Oh, and a bass guitar is a kind of human instrument. She's really good at it."

"That's nice."

He lets a pause sit heavy in between them rather than rambling on into the void of Pink's torn and turbulent emotions. He's picking up her anxiety, and it's making him restless, but he doesn't want to distract from whatever it is that Pink needs.

"I want to see her."

"Pearl?"

"Yes."

"So you'll talk to pearl, then? Tomorrow? You promise?"

She gulps. "Yes."

"Good." He smiles. "I'm freezing. Let's go back to the other room."

"Oh-- Oh no! I'm sorry, I totally forgot!" She looks so frantic, she almost hits him in the head with her arm.

"Hey it's okay, you're warm."

She turns her head, but he can see her blushing.

Sleep catches Steven with yet another dream. There's a tinny sound in his ears, Connie yelling at him, the static-gray floor of white's head, and that empty void in his belly where his gem ought to be. This dream again. This dream, every night for a year when he was fourteen, and of course it was going to resurface now, when he's sharing his dreamspace with someone else.

He has to act calm.

He looks up, his mono vision blurring in and out of focus as he tries to glance around the room, but all he can see is those long nails clutching at his gem as it rises, reforms, and all he can feel is the hard pulse of his heart in his chest and the sensation of Connie's fingers digging into his skin.

The glowing form of Pink Diamond rises up. Despite the past few days he's spent with a version of her, the image of her still sparks dread just like it had all those years ago. The room goes dark around him, swirling. His gut tugs at him. But instead of transitioning, becoming his mother, himself, the diamond form simply descends.

He's going to die. He's going to die and there's nothing he can do about it. White Diamond is going to get what she wants. He is going to  _ die _ .

Pink stops glowing. Settles on her feet. Looks around the room.

_ No no no no no. This is not how it goes. This is not how it went. He needs him. _

"Steven?"

She's looking at him.

"No, no, I can't, n-no, I need him," he says, incapable of a coherent thought, his heart beating in palpitations and his body tingling as he feels himself die, again, he's dying again, again, it's never going to be okay.

"Steven, what is this? Is this a memory? What are you dreaming about?"

"I need him," he whispers.

"She got them," Pink says.

"I need him."

Someone touches him, big hands that are not Connie's, and he tries to flinch but fails as his body starts to give. Faulty system. Broken boy.

"Steven, it's a dream," the facsimile of his real self tells him. "We should get out of here. Whatever this is, it's making you panic."

"Who are you?" Connie says.

"You're not real," Pink says, and Steven doesn't know what is happening anymore, except that Connie's fingers are being gently pried off his arms.

"Take a breath," she says. "Come on. You're panicking."

"You don't know anything about panic," Steven says.

"That's not true."

He takes a breath.

"This must have happened years ago, huh?" she says, looking around the room. "You look so young."

"I... didn't think you'd know," he says.

"What?" She laughs. "How humans age? I did live on Earth for a long time. Humans are my favorite. You are so magical."

They're walking somewhere, but Steven isn't quite paying attention. He just wants to be home again, to talk to his therapist or at very least his friends. He wants to see Connie and Peridot and Lapis and Bismuth and Pearl again. He wants to watch reruns of camp pining hearts on the bed at the beach house and think about nothing.

"What is this place?" Pink says.

He opens his eyes.

They are in the beach house now, Pink cross-legged on the floor. He gets up and walks over to the bed, flopping onto it. Soft and cool, just everything that he was missing a moment ago. He grips his comforter, rolls over, reaches under his shirt, and feels his gem. There. Nowhere else. He's himself again.

"It's my bedroom," he says. "I sleep here, on Earth."

"Home?"

"Yeah," he sighs. "Home."

She lies back across the floor, her knees up so her feet won't fuck up his wall.

"I just want you to have friends," he mumbles.

"I don't need friends. I am a gem."

"That's not true. Gems need friends."

"I guess," she says. "It's probably just a lie I tell myself."

He nods.

They lie there for a while. The dream drifts, not sure if it wants to hold them in one place or not, fragmented and sprinkled with random side thoughts and stories. Pink doesn't seem to mind, or maybe she just doesn't really notice.

"Do you know how to end these dreams?" he asks, after a little while in silence.

"I don't know," she says. "I don't exactly dream much."

He hums.

"Do you want to do something while we're stuck here?"

He rolls his head so he's looking over the edge of his bed at her. At this point, the environment has transformed into an abstract mess of her room, his room, and some kind of earthly wood.

"I don't have any ideas, if that's what you're asking."

She scrunches her face together and stares at the ceiling.

"Do you want to have sex?"

Steven blinks.

"What?"

"It's an activity humans do when they're bored. And it's fun."

He stares at her, dumbstruck.

"I-I don't know, it's just a thought! I used to do that sort of thing on earth! I think it's fun! Why are you staring at me like that?"

Steven snorts, unable to keep himself from laughing as she stammers her way through some kind of totally alien explanation. Sex with Pink Diamond? Yeah, it's a dream, and yeah, she is attractive, but it's absurd enough as it is that she's here at all. She was dead for most of his childhood. She's his  _ mother _ , in an abstract sense.

He wakes up on the cold floor of the main chamber, a foot from a still-raging fire, with Pink staring at him, looking befuddled.

"Oh," he says, staring into flames. His body aches from poor sleep and the sick feeling that has lingered over him for the past few days. Despite all the trauma in that part of his head, he wants to be back in that dreamspace, safe from the body he inhabits.

"I'm sorry," Pink says. She's so far away, just because she's sat up off the floor and he's still lying on it. "I don't know how to do this anymore. I don't, actually, know if I ever did it right."

"What?" he asks. He has a sneaking suspicion he knows what she's trying to communicate, but he wants her to admit it.

"H-how to interact with people, it's been years," she sighs. "I don't know how to play anymore."

"Can I tell you a story?" he asks, sitting up and leaning against her leg. "About my mom and dad."

"Other me?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

Her eyebrows are furrowed together, but she's focused on him.

"Well, one time, Dad decided he wanted to fuse with my mom. With you. So he set up a big dance stage, and he put on his favorite music, and he invited her out at night and danced with her. And they didn't fuse."

"Well of course not. He was human, right?"

"Yeah. But the real reason they couldn't fuse is because they couldn't talk to each other. Rose was really good at being a leader, and being a follower, but she'd never been anyone's equal."

"Are you saying that I don't know how to be a friend?" She looks a little upset. Fuck.

"Well-well, no, not exactly, but all your life everything has been framed in terms of playing with people, right? What if it's not about being amusing?"

She's looking at him. She's so intense. Her pupils small rhombuses framed by the deep fuchsia of her irises. Oddly human, just like the rest of her. Obsessed with the human, he thinks.

And then her eyes widen. She dances through something like confusion and consideration, in his head, a wave of sudden emotion where it had been so guarded a moment before.

"I've never met another Pink Diamond before, not except... her... I never had a chance to think of anyone that way. Right? That is what you're talking about right? I'm so confused!"

Stars above she is way too much like his mom.

She flails her arms. "None of this explains why you laughed at me."

Steven is derailed once again. "Um? I laughed at you because I can't have sex with someone I don't even know!"

"Don't know? I-" She fists her hands in her hair, dragging her head down til her elbows rest on her knees. "I don't know! Is it a new thing? A human thing?"

She's confused.

She's his mother.

She's a gem.

Gems don't think like humans. He remembers, graphically, the first time Peridot asked him for a kiss. She'd learned, at least a little, from watching endless runs of Camp Pining Hearts, but she asked him anyway, and he'd looked at Connie immediately, and she had looked back at him, and Peridot had said "what?"

He had known what it was, and what it meant, and he had gone ahead and kissed her anyway, lips on lips, her mathematically smooth skin brushing right up against his bristly five o'clock shadow, and now they're all dating each other.

There is a little flurry in his chest.

He does know her. He can feel her emotions as they roll off of her. He knows her dreams, and he knows what she's afraid of. It would be rash, and stupid, of course, because there is so much he  _ doesn't _ know, but he wants it anyway.

"Can I kiss you?"

He watches her fingers loosen.

"You want to?"

"Yeah. I changed my mind."

"Are you sure?"

"If you are."

Pink stares at the place where the wall joins the floor. Not a seam, but a gathering of rough edges. Her eyes drift back to his, and then she slips a hand out of her hair and into his, pulling him closer. His heart skips a beat for a second before he leans into the firm, gentle tug of her fingers, tilts his head, and touches his lips to hers.

She's nervous, but calmer than his giddy, terrified excitement. Her lips rub against his gently, smooth but not quite eerily so the way Peridot's are. She encapsules him, and he's giddily aware that he is half her size because it's hard to move against her without being sloppy. He kisses her upper lip first, and then her lower one, and then she covers his entire mouth with hers. It's kind of like kissing Connie and Peridot in some ways, but in the end it is something completely different. He tries to find a rhythm, but the kiss maintains that awkwardness right to the end.

She tastes like wintergreen and earth.

Her hand has migrated to his back, holding him close to her. His hands are against her collarbones. He sinks into her even as he breaks from the kiss to breathe.

Neither of them say a word.

He's tingling from head to toe. He leans forward into her til his head is buried in her neck. He breathes.

She rocks them gently back and forth.

"You ready to call pearl?" he asks, after a long moment has passed.

"No," Pink says.

"You said you would talk to her."

Pink sighs. "Steven, I'm not sure this is a good idea."

He pushes back away from her shoulder so he can look at her face. "Why not? I'm sure she'll be..."

He realizes that he doesn't know what he's saying. By all accounts, Pearl has come to terms with Pink's death.

Pink shakes her head. "She's the better choice. She's not going to panic if she sees me..." She pauses. "Like this. She always knew I was a rebel. But Steven, they've moved on. They don't want to see me. I am not a part of their world anymore."

"I--" he pauses again, biting his lip. "I'm not going to forget you. They'll want me to tell them anyway. They're going to know you're here."

Pink drops her head.

"Do you have to?"

"They'll make me tell them somehow. They care about me too much." He breathes in, the minty smell of her pink curls permeating the air. "I like you. I don't want to keep you a secret from anyone."

"Okay." Pink breathes in. Out, through powerful false lungs. "Will you tell her first?"

"I can try."

She smiles a little thankful smile. The crinkles at the edges of her eyes fold up.

Steven wraps his arms around her neck and holds her close for a long moment. She gasps out a tiny half-sound and hugs back.

"Okay." He pulls away. "Stay close."

Pink nods.

The hard part is not finding Earth's signal receivers via the comm link. The hard part is not even locating Pearl's cell phone. The hard part is hitting that button. She's talking to Bismuth, happy and innocent of the past about to resurface. He's right, though, they're all going to find out eventually. He watches her laugh as Bismuth pulls her into a big side-hug and walks off with a wave. He watches her stand, gripping her hands together at her chest.

He glances back at Pink.

He hits call.

She startles out of whatever reverie she had been in and pulls her phone out of her gem. The FOV switches from whatever mystical third-person gem devices allow to Pearl's front-facing camera.

"Steven!" She says. "Are you alright? Garnet told me you are stranded on some exoplanet."

"Hey, Pearl!" He chuckles. "Yeah, I'm okay. I am stranded, but it's okay! There's a gem here, she's been helping me out."

"She hasn't hurt you?"

"No."

"Well that's a relief. What convinced you to call me up?"

Steven licks his lips. He has to tell her what is going on. He doesn't want to. He knows that there is no happily ever after.

"It's complicated. Are you uh, up for talking about some stuff that happened a long time ago?"

Pearl narrows her eyes. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“Well,” Steven says. “Uh, the gem I’m with, here, is someone who knew you before the rebellion.”

“Are you sure?” Pearl asks. “I mean, I suppose it’s possible…”

“Yeah I’m sure.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s pink Diamond,” He blurts.

“Well that’s absurd. Of course it isn’t pink Diamond, You have her gem. You do! It’s under your shirt.” She waves her hand at Steven, presumably to express the location of his gem.

“No, it’s not my gem-- I’m not talking about mom. This is another Pink Diamond. Like. From a parallel timeline.”

“A parallel timeline?” She still looks awfully skeptical. Steven's heart is pounding out his throat.

“Do.. Do you remember when I was a kid, and I found the glass of time? That one time there were like a million Stevens in the sea temple palace thing? Yeah uh, well, another one of those existed before that, and this pink used it to go back in time… to stop something. I think she’s been stuck here for like five thousand years.”

“Really.” she frowns. “Well.”

“She asked to talk to you.”

“She asked for that? That doesn’t sound like her.”

“Well, I told her I wanted her to talk to anyone at all, and she decided you were the best option,” he shrugs.

“That makes a lot more sense. Steven, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“No… but… she’s really nice, or at least she’s been nice to me, and she’s really stuck in her head, Pearl.” He grimaces at her. “Pearl, please. I’m the first person she’s talked to in five thousand years.”

Pearl purses her lips.

“Okay,” she says. “I trust you.”

Steven deflates with a sigh. Thank the stars above.

“Okay, I’ll go get her,” he says.

Pearl stares back with a contemplative expression.

Steven scurries down the hall to the greenhouse. The stress is rolling up his body and off his arms in little waves of buzzy energy. He’s worried how this conversation will go. Pearl is right, it’s probably a bad idea. Pearl was literally owned by Pink, when she was like this anyway. It’s hard to think of her as anything but an entitled child even now.

She’s sitting cross legged against a window. Picking at a loose thread of her pantaloons or something.

“She said she’ll talk to you,” Steven says.

She looks up. Her face pales, but she steels her shoulders and stands up. “Okay. I did promise I would talk to her.”

“She’s nice,” Steven says, “Don’t worry.”

“I – She’s – I miss her too much,” she finishes in a whisper.

“She misses you too,” Steven says, hoping it’s true. “Even if she’s sometimes glad your other self is gone.”

She looks nervous now, but follows him down the hall into the communications room again. Pearl is still on her phone, staring absently at the hallway entrance. She focuses on him as he enters the room, and her eyes widen and look up. At Pink. Steven steps aside.

Pink is standing just in the door, staring at Pearl with eyes as wide as Pearl’s. Her hands are clasped near her gem. She wrings them nervously, then stops, as if she has processed what she is doing.

“Pearl?” Pink says, in a soft little voice.

“Rose,” Pearl says.

Rose.

Steven forgot somehow. Rose is Pink. And Pearl knew Pink as Rose. Why would looking different warrant a different response from her? They were close. And even this Pink was Rose once. She simply chose Pink over Rose, to her own detriment.

Pink laughs. “I don’t know what I should even say, I… Kind of don’t know you, you’re a different person from who you were five thousand years ago, I… I guess I should say that I am.” Steven watches a tear bead on her cheek. “Sorry. For everything I put you through.”

Pearl does not reply. She looks back and forth between Steven and Pink. He can feel anxiety and stress rolling off of Pink, mixed in with frustration and his own worry folded back on itself. Pearl's emotions are only knowable from her expressions. It’s annoying, that he has to guess those. It makes him feel biased.

_ You’re always biased, Steven, _ he reminds himself.

“How did you end up here?” Pearl asks. She’s taking deep breaths like she’s trying to stay calm but her voice is surprisingly soft.

“I messed up,” Pink says. “I didn’t shatter myself.” Pink’s face is closed to emotions, standing at the corner of the room, but her emotions are roiling with guilt and shame.

“Steven told me that you time traveled. Honestly, I forgot that we could do that. Very creative.”

“Thank you?” Pink says. “I have been trying to stay out of your way…”

Pearl looks at Pink, face unreadable. The tension in the room swells like a pressure on Steven’s shoulders.

Pink shifts on her feet.

Something drips.

“Well there’s no need,” Pearl says. “You can come to earth and visit Little Homeschool if you wish, the same as any other gem. You’re here, you might as well join us.”

Steven lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“I can’t just… Ruin your.. your-- your happy existence. I am not in it for a reason. You know who I am and you-- You know what I have done, better than most.” She’s gripping at her sleeves like she is going to tear them off her shoulders. “It would be too easy to hurt someone. I would be too close to the others.”

Pearl is *looking* at her again. “You are right. I know nothing about you. All I know is that you take the form of a gem I used to know.” Pearl sighs. “I-I don’t know what you expect me to say! I haven’t talked to rose in twenty three years, she was gone. This is unprecedented. But-- If you are here, even if you are not an actual pink Diamond, you’re still welcome on Little Homeworld. Any gem is always welcome to try.” She turns to Steven. “I can’t talk to this person for you. I don’t know her. I – Apologize.”

Steven can feel Pink’s anger and frustration deep in his belly. He takes a deep breath and wills the emotion away, but it doesn’t leave. “It’s okay, Pearl. I’ll uh, call you back later?”

She looks relieved at the suggestion. “Yes. You should call Amethyst, she is a therapist after all...”

“Shit! I didn’t even think of that!” Steven says. “I will.”

She smiles.

He hits the “end call” button on the giant dashboard.

He lets out a deep sigh.

“Well, that went about as well as it could have,” Steven decides aloud, walking over to the dying fire and throwing a couple more logs onto it. He sits on a pile of green brush with a thud and stares at the flame. That feeling of anger and frustration hasn’t left, so he gestures to Pink, who is still standing in the doorway of the room, arms wrapped around her midsection.

She stares at him.

“I know you’re upset,” he says. “We can talk about that.”

“Upset?” She asks. She walks over and sits down next to him anyway, looking into the firelight.

“I can feel that you’re angry,” he says. “I can feel your emotions.”

“I’m not angry, Steven,” she says. “I am… She doesn’t hate me. I’m. Why are you angry?”

“I’m not angry!” he says, louder than he intends, loud enough that it reverberates around the hall, and he realizes with a sinking dread that she’s right, that he is angry, and that emotion he was feeling came from him. “Or… maybe I am,” he says, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. He can feel burning shame bubbling up and tugging away his anger, but instead of letting himself sink into a pit of self pity, he takes another deep breath, lets it out, and tries to think of anything else.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Pink asks.

The fire flickers with blue and white light along the lips and edges of the freshly added logs. “I guess I’m still tired of being the sole manager of other people’s well being,” he says. He feels beyond embarrassed. It’s not like he’s ever been in the same space as another empath, though, not on the level of Pink.

She puts a big hand on his back and rubs her thumb up and down. “That makes sense, I think,” she says. “I don’t exactly understand, but I only ever tried to fix anything once, and I failed, so…” She laughs.

“That’s not true!” He sits up straight, anger washed away by indignation. “Mom would never have faked her own death if it weren’t for you, and from what you’ve said, that was necessary.”

“I guess,” Pink says. “But my rebellion did not succeed.”

Steven chuckles. “You can’t win em all.” he leans into her side.

He can still feel the sensation of utter humiliation under the skin of his cheeks. He knows recovery is a long, working process, but he can't help but feel betrayed by himself. Pink hasn't even managed to lighten his mood too much. He is sure she is trying, but in a lot of ways, he’s a lost cause. He’s got to just experience it, and the hardest part is that he knows she can feel everything he feels.

Steven fishes around for a way to switch gears. Pink seems perfectly happy to be sitting here, thumb moving up and down along his spine, staring into the fire. His mind is running circles around itself in the low light. The floor is frigid, and the sun’s rays keep catching on the edges of his retinas and blinding him. He can’t believe he yelled. It’s been years since he was last this close to his past, to the monster he used to be, and to his mother. He runs a thumb over the front facet of his gemstone.

“Pink?”

“Mmm?”

“It’s cold in here.”

“Is it too cold? You could sit on my lap if you wanted.. or- Or! Actually,” she perks up. “I have an idea. Come with me.”

She jumps to her feet, causing a breeze. He stares up at her, unsure but takes the hand she stretches out to him. She’s skipping, she looks happy, but her emotions are more nervous than anything from what he can feel through the weight of his own turbulent thoughts.

He follows her down the hall. At first, it seems she’s going to take him to the greenhouse again, but she walks right past it, further into the cavernous depths of the planet. The path slopes down, and he can feel the space grow warmer. He isn’t sure if there’s some planetary heat reason for such a thing happening, but they can’t be that far underground, so there must be some other explanation. It’s not that much warmer anyway- a few degrees.

Pink stops in front of him. He runs into her, jolted out of his thoughts by a cloud of bright pink ass fabric.

“You can float, right?” Pink says, unperturbed by the fact that he just ran headfirst into her pantaloons.

“Yeah,” he says, failing to fight a blush she probably can’t see anyway. At least he’s not blushing from shame this time.

“Alright! It’s not too deep, it’s a straight jump. Let’s go!” She leaps in. Steven follows without hesitation.

Steven feels like he’s sinking into Wonderland. The stones around him disappear into the dark more and more as he descends, and when he touches bare ground, he can hear the movement of some fathomless body of water. Like some kind of fae, Pink sinks into the darkness, turning a small pool a rosy gray color as her gem dips below the surface. By the light of his own, Steven can see an endless series of lakes and pillars, stretching into nothing beyond him. He can’t help but feel a little unnerved, being in such a large, dark space.

He hears a bubbling and turns back to the pool Pink is in to see that it is frothing. He watches her rise back to the surface in a wave of steam, hair drooping from the water.

“It’s hot now!” Pink grins. “Come on in!”

“You made a hot tub?”

“Yeah! I thought it might be nice. It’s easier for me to change water’s temperature without going overboard, so…”

“Thats, awfully nice of you!” He takes a step forward, and then stops. “I don’t want to get my clothes wet, though,” he says. “I could get hypothermia if I go back upstairs with wet clothes.”

“Take them off, then!”

“Uh!?” Steven grips his coat. “Y-Yeah? Um. Isn’t that a little bit…” He realizes a little too late that Pink may not have any sensibility about clothes, given that she’s not even a human.

“There’s no reason not to,” she says. “No one’s here to care. I could even take off my clothes, if you wanted.”

“Uhhm??” He blushes. “Sure?”

She breathes in, and her clothes dissipate in a flash of light.

She has nipples.

It’s the first thing he notices, mostly because the first time that Peridot took her clothes off around him she was a complete barbie doll. Absolutely featureless. In fact, she had to purposefully come back with a more humanoid form to get the human features she wanted, namely a pair of fat tits.

“Uhm, did- did you shapeshift..? Why is your…” He realizes he’s being super intrusive and looks away. “S-sorry.”

“What? The human form? No, I just like it. It’s so much more interesting than the standard gem get out.”

He looks back at her, and she immediately puts a hand over one tiny breast. “Don’t you agree?”

“Um! Yeah! Yeah definitely!” He’s a little uncomfortable, but mostly confused and horny. And she’s asked him if he wants to have sex. Clearly, she’s not uneasy with the idea. He takes off his jacket. His heart is beating through his chest like it wants to leap straight into the hot tub pink has created.

“Are you uncomfortable with this? We Don’t have to – I can find a better way to keep warm.”

Something snaps.

She’s hot.

She’s nice.

Why is he so hung up on this? It’s not like he’s in a closed relationship. It’s not like they’re going to have weird incest babies. It’s not like she raised him.

“No! Fuck it!” He tears off his shirt. “I’m tired of feeling weird about it!”

Untying his shoes takes far too long, especially with pink on the other side of the pool, arms thrown over the sides. He peels off his socks with a zeal he did not know he contained and stuffs them both into one shoe, reaching for his jean zip before he’s even stood all the way up again. He shoves off his lower garments in one big push.

Stars, it’s cold.

He stands at the edge of the pool for one elongated second, aware of Pink’s eyes on him. Then, he climbs in. 

The hot water encases his body like a blanket, soothing him in a way he hasn’t felt in days. For a moment, he simply sinks under the water, feeling warm and cleansed, but the sensation does not distract him from his quest for long. Steven resurfaces, and moves towards Pink.

“May I?” he asks, stretching out his hands towards her soft torso.

She grins. “Of course,” she says.

He makes contact, his heart still skipping beats. It’s not like he hasn’t touched her before, but it’s different, this time. The sensation of his skin against hers sends zings down his arms and spine despite being perfectly mundane.

He moves his hands up, stopping just where her breasts start to swell from her chest.

“Go on,” she says, her voice dripping with sugar.

Steven takes a breath. He brushes the hairs around her nipples with one thumb. He can feel a large hand against his back, the touch much more powerful without the layers of clothing in the way. Every hair on his back stands up at the sensation of skin against skin. Her hand traces down his spine, and then trails over his hip. The thumb stops very close to his groin, buried in the hair of his happy trail. He can feel his blood in his veins like vibrant wires. He can feel the weight of his arousal just beneath her touch.

He’s having sex.

With his mother.

Steven takes a deep breath and presses his tongue into the fleshy surface of Pink’s right breast. Somewhere above him, she makes a little noise, and a second hand curls into his hair, egging him on. Her thumb slides closer to his cock.

He sucks at her skin, wondering if it will bruise if he tries to leave a hickey. He presses his tongue against her nipple and feels it soften. It’s thrilling. She put so much work into this form, and it’s making him feel things. She did that for herself. She wants to be human-like.

Maybe she even wants to be human.

He’s glad she’s not. He’s glad she’s been alive long enough to meet him. He feels a twinge of guilt at his own selfish impulse but it is quickly buried by the excited thrumming of his heart as he moves his lips up her body to bite at her realistic collarbone. The skin slides between his teeth and her bone. He tugs at it and she lets out another little gasping moan. Oh he wants it. He moves his face away from her chest to stare up into her huge diamond eyes. He wants it, but she’s so big.

She’s so big, he finds himself climbing onto her thighs to get a good reach. To reach her face. Her soft cheeks. Her soft lips. She laughs when he licks her jaw and slides his fingers into the hair at the base of her skull.

Her thumb slides down to the base of his cock and he twitches. He takes a deep breath against her neck.

“Does that feel good?” she asks. He can tell that it’s intended to be goading, a little tease in her tone. He nods against her skin. Soft skin. Little pale hairs poking out of realistic pores. Human. He licks her neck.

“Has anyone ever gotten you off with your gem?”

“Aaah?” he takes a moment to clear his head. Pink waits, her hand firmly on his waist. Framing his gem, he realizes. “Not… not just my gem?”

She runs a finger around the edge of his gem, right where the skin turns to stone. He shudders and jerks under her touch.

“Would you like me to?”

He’s so  _ horny _ **.**

She’s still  _ teasing him. _

__ Steven whines.

“Yeah,” he says.

Like a switch has been flipped, her fingers are pressed into his gem, almost overwhelming him with the force of it. He didn’t think that he could come from gem stimulation alone – it’s not even necessarily sexual, not like dick touching – but he’s sure he almost does there, holding his breath while her fingers move. He looks up at Pink’s flushed cheeks and she grins at him, far more mischievous than anything he’s seen on that face yet. Her fingers slide over his facets without a hitch, playing him like a drum. He shakes.

Her other hand slides behind him, and for a second he thinks she’s going to put her fingers up his ass, but instead she hoists him up, forcing him to let go of her hair, until her face is level with his belly, and she licks him.

This time, Steven cannot stop himself from coming. He curls around her head and gasps into the fluff of her hair.

Pink lowers him back into the water of the pool, wiping his jizz off her neck. Steven makes an embarrassed noise.

“Sorry,” he says, feeling like a funny little bag of bones.

“For what?” Pink asks, licking his come off of her thumb.

Steven buries his face in his hands.

“Was that good?” She asks. He feels maybe a little guilty at the worry in her voice. He takes a deep breath, sinks under the warm water for a moment, and then stands up.

“Yeah, that was amazing.” He smiles. “Where did you get the idea to lick someone's gem?”

Pink blushes. “Ahhuh, a friend. Um.”

He can wager a guess which “friend” this was. He laughs.

“Don’t laugh at me!” Pink says.

“Hey,” Steven pulls her hands away from her face. “It’s cute, okay? And that was incredible. Next time you see them, thank your friend for me.”

“AuhIm not gonna do that!” Pink near-shouts. Her blush has now nearly reached her tiny delicious breasts.

“Why not?”

Pink looks absolutely mortified. “Steven!”

“I love you,” he says, instead of pushing his luck. “Thanks for taking me down to these pools.” He leans against her chest.

“Of course,” She stammers. “You were cold.”

“We could keep warming up,” he says, trying to sound lascivious. “If you’d like.” He presses his body against her torso, aware of exactly where his dick is on her form.

Pink shudders against him. It’s so satisfying, that he can pull that reaction from her. He grins up at her. Her blush has not receded. It’s pretty. He wants to keep it on her face.

“Yeah! What do you have in mind?”

He thinks for a minute. He could return the favor very literally, and lick her gem until she tells him to stop, but he thinks he might want to explore the functionality of her hard light form instead. “Has anyone ever eaten your pussy?”

“Eaten?” she frowns. “What is a pussy?”

He presses his foot against her mound. “That is your pussy,” he says.

“M-My vulva? Why would you-- eat- it?”

“It’s a saying. It’s like licking a gem I guess.”

“Ohhhh.” Understanding lights her face. “Okay, yes, then. It’s been, well, about seven thousand years…”

He grins. “I can show you all the modern tactics.”

She grins back. Then she frowns. “How are we going to do this? I don’t want you to get cold…”

He knows what he wants. “Just stand up! I’m crotch height.”

Pink flops into the pool laughing. He can’t help but join her, because he has to admit it’s a funny idea. A hot funny idea.

She sits up again. “Alright, sounds good.”

He knew she was big.

He knew he was crotch height, for star’s sake. But he is not quite ready for the fact that she’s so big. She’s a big woman. Stars, is he into big women. Stars-- and he hates to admit it, because usually - almost always – the giant women in his life are his  _ family _ . And pink is too, he reminds himself. His mom. But. It’s different. Opal  _ raised him _ . It’s different. She’s really attractive. He puts his hands on her thighs for a moment.

Pink’s cunny is covered in soft white fluff, realistic humanoid hair eerily similar in color and texture to the stuff on her head. It’s wet, but he knows what it will look like when it’s dry. He runs a hand through it, feeling it stick up between his fingers. He runs his hand through it again. Then, he drags two fingers down in between the outer folds of Pink’s pussy, framing her clit.

She jerks a little bit.

Steven pushes her thighs aside a little and slips his tongue into her inner lips. He licks up her slit, coming away with a string of pink slick linking them together. Pink, huh? He wonders if whatever fake blood she has runs pink as well. How much can gems change their own color pallette? Not much, he assumes. Unfortunately, the pink slick tastes like nothing. Fortunately, the texture is accurate enough to make up for that. He decides to clean her up.

Steven focuses his time between Pink’s legs on studying the minutiae of her form. She must have done the same, to get it this close-- he might as well be eating out any human girl. Not that he’s eaten out many cis human girls, a few, but his long term partners are either not cis or not human, so the experience is not his most familiar. It’s crazy attractive, to know that Pink puts this much work into being human. He can’t tell why, but nevertheless this huge pink woman with an utterly human body is making him feel all sorts of amazing.

She makes all sorts of little noises above him, one hand finding its way into his damp hair as he sucks at her. He can feel her knees start to go weak and holds her on his face with the strength she lent him when her other self gave up her form. Her shouts and moans echo around the vast cave and he can feel the water warming with her skin until he drags an orgasm out of her.

He holds her for a moment, only letting go when her fingers slide out of his hair. She sinks into the pool.

“Wow,” she says.

“You’re welcome,” Steven says, grinning. “And thanks for warming up the pool. I can’t believe you have  _ slick _ down there.”

“I make an active effort to be as human as possible,” Pink says solemnly.

“I can tell!” He laughs. “Human approved.”

They bask in the heat of the pool until Steven starts feeling the weight of his sleepiness heavy on his shoulders. He doesn’t want to move-- he’d be perfectly content just falling asleep here, in Pink’s arms, but he feels like sitting in water for an entire night would probably be bad for him, even if it feels nice now. He takes a deep breath and pushes himself off of Pink’s chest.

“How do you dry yourself off?”

“Mmm?” Pink cracks one eye. “I just think of something sexy and the water evaporates.”

“Really? That’s it?” he strokes his chin. His stubble has far past grown in by now, and is actually strokeable. “Well, that’s easy. All I have to do is look at you.”

Pink blushes.

Steven climbs out of the pool and stretches. The floor is warm close to the pool. He wiggles his toes, and looks down at Pink where she’s slouched in the water.

She is attractive. She’s  _ beautiful _ . She looks up at him with half-lidded eyes. Her body is soft. Her hair is saggy from water, but it still curls up at the ends, just like his.

He channels his attraction through his gem and out onto his skin. He’s  _ warmed _ by it. He’d never before bothered to learn if lust controlled any of his abilities, he’s always assumed it hadn’t. He breathes out a puff of steam and grins.

“That was way easier than lighting a fire was,” Steven says. “I wish you had shown me sooner.”

“How was I supposed to know that our powers worked the same?” Pink says, climbing out of the water and drying herself in a similar manner. “I was worried you’d burn your skin, but I guess that’s not a problem.”

“I guess not,” he says. “And it’s true that I can’t just keep myself horny all the time. I have to like, sleep.”

“Have you tried being horny in your sleep?”

Steven laughs.

On his request, they move the campfire setup to the back of the tunnel, where it’s a few degrees warmer. He sits on Pink’s lap and watches the firelight with heavy eyes.

“Sometimes I do miss them,” Pink says. The words rattle around the room and down the hall.

“Whom?”

“My- the Diamonds. All the gems I left behind when I broke my timeline.”

“What if you went back and visited them?”

“I can’t.”

Steven reaches up and cups her face. She looks down at him. She’s making an expression he can’t quite read.

“Sure you can.”

“I broke the time glass, Steven. I can’t go back.”

“You broke it?”

She looks at the wall.

“I didn’t want to think about going home.”

“So you broke your only way back?”

Pink’s arms tug around Steven and pull him close to her chest. “I threw a fit. I broke the communicator microphone too.”

“THAT’S why it was broken?” Steven says.

“Y-Yeah! But it’s also why I had such an easy time fixing it! I don’t want to keep you here, I promise!”

“I’m too tired for this,” Steven mumbles. 

He can feel how scared she is and he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to think about what situation makes someone sever all ties to others. All of them. She fried the communicator  _ and _ the time glass.

She was desperate at some point. Or nervous. Or something.

Something.

Steven does not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait for an update on this. I got really stuck on the last sex scene of ch. 4 and needed to put the project aside for a bit. We'll see if i can get through that one damn scene-- in the meantime, i managed to work up the gall to edit this one.
> 
> I wrote Dance With You and one day I will make an audio version of it. I just need vocals, actually.

**Author's Note:**

> I have an album I'm writing for this fic, and so, so many illustrations for it too... I'll release it all in good time. :3
> 
> Special thanks to a friend for allowing me to use some of their fangems for this (Buttercup Sapphire and Seraphinite.)


End file.
